Chapter Twenty-Four: A Roomba With a Theology Degree
The last thing I hear behind us is the soldier slamming the wall again, stone shivering like it’s trying to crawl away. The radio sits in Professor Willias’s hand like a guilty object, and his “That’s what worries me” follows us down the corridor the way a curse follows a fairy tale.
The Academy starts steering us toward the infirmary the way rivers steer dead branches. No one actually says infirmary at first. They don't have to. It's just the direction our feet are taking us, down the corridor that smells faintly of herbs and all the joy of being told to sit still while strangers prod your injuries and judge your life choices.
Which, to be fair, in this case would be difficult to argue with.
We’re all filthy.
The adrenaline is wearing off in slow, bureaucratic stages, like my body is filing paperwork. First it approves “walking.” Then it denies “pretending we’re fine.”
Not cute, adventurous, "we've returned from a dangerous quest and learned something about friendship" filthy. This is dungeon dust in my hair, dried blood on Mira's temple, a smear of black grime across Kaela's cheek that makes her look like someone tried to improve her with charcoal and lost confidence halfway through.
My throat still aches from where the soldier grabbed me. Every swallow feels like my neck has opinions about what happened and intends to file them formally. The bruises there have darkened into ugly purple crescents that throb with each breath.
Mira is walking like she's fine. She’s also blinking a little too hard, like the world won’t stay in one place unless she bullies it.
This would be more convincing if she weren't bleeding.
It's not dramatic bleeding, just a dark crusted line down the side of her forehead where the rifle struck her, and a bruise already gathering around one eye in slow ugly purples. There's a stiffness in the way she holds her left side too, a carefulness she thinks nobody notices.
"We're going to the infirmary," I say.
"No."
"Mira. . ."
"I just got out of the infirmary. I'm not going back because some oversized yellow idiot hit me in the face."
Kaela's tail flicks anxiously. "Maybe just for a little bit? Just so Nurse Runa can check your head?"
"My head is fine."
"You got hit with a rifle," I say.
"And I'm still standing. Clearly I won."
"That's not how winning works."
Mira turns to face me fully, which is a mistake because the movement makes her wince. Just a fraction. Just enough. She catches herself immediately, jaw tightening, but we all saw it.
"You just flinched," Kaela says softly.
"I did not."
"You absolutely did," Lyra adds.
Mira's glare could strip paint. "I shifted my weight. There's a difference."
Kaela makes a tiny noise that is probably meant to be soothing but comes out like a kettle contemplating violence. "The bath is closer. We could clean up there first? Warm water would help. We can look at the bruising without everyone in the infirmary staring and asking questions."
Lyra glances toward Mira's side, then toward the corridor ahead. "Bath first is strategically better. Fewer witnesses. More privacy."
I look at her. "You can't possibly be taking her side."
Kaela smiles brightly at me. "Three against one."
"One of you is concussed," I say.
Kaela giggles. "Fey must like Mira a lot. She's so worried."
I feel my entire face go hot.
Kaela's grin widens. "You're even hovering."
"I am not hovering."
"You are," Lyra says. "You've been walking close enough to catch Mira if she falls for the past three corridors."
"That is called being practical."
Kaela clasps her hands beneath her chin. "Practical in a very romantic way."
“There is no romantic way to be practical,” I say, sounding like someone who alphabetizes their feelings.
Mira's eyebrow lifts. Even bruised, she manages to look unbearably smug. "I don't know. I think practicality can be very attractive."
My brain makes a sound like a door slamming. The door is labeled DO NOT THINK ABOUT THIS and my hand is already on the handle.
"See?" Kaela whispers loudly. "She's doing it again."
"Doing what?" I ask, my voice climbing half an octave.
"Being red."
"I am covered in dust," I snap. "Everything is red. Probably. I don't know. Very normal. Very scientific." I throw both hands into the air. "You know what? Fine. Great. Excellent. Whatever. We can all go sit in a giant bowl of hot water and dissolve into soup for all I care."
Mira's smirk deepens. "Though if I did faint, you'd catch me, wouldn't you?" She says it lightly, but there’s a careful pause afterward, like she’s listening for her own skull to object.
"I. . . That's not. . .you're not going to faint."
Mira tilts her head, winces slightly, then continues anyway because she's apparently committed to this bit even at the cost of her own skull. "So you wouldn't catch me."
"I implied nothing. I'm being practical about your theoretical collapse, which you are not going to have."
"You care a lot," Kaela says.
"I care about not having to explain to Nurse Runa why I let someone with a head injury wander around the Academy."
Lyra turns on her heel and heads toward the bath corridor. "Then stop talking and start walking."
Kaela bounces after her. Mira follows.
I stand there for a moment, furious on principle and because Kaela is wrong and also because she isn't entirely wrong, which is the more irritating option.
Then I go after them. Because obviously. If Mira collapses face-first into a wall, someone needs to be nearby to say I told you so.
That is friendship. Just friendship.
As we walk, we pass a handful of students who do a terrible job pretending not to stare. A pair of younger students flatten themselves politely against the wall as we pass. One of them glances at Mira's forehead and makes a face like they're reconsidering several life choices.
"See?" Mira says quietly. "The infirmary would be worse."
An older student with silver hair and too many books gives us a wide berth, her eyes lingering on the blood crusted along Mira's temple.
Kaela reaches over and delicately picks a bit of grit from my shoulder. "You have dungeon in your hair."
"I had guessed."
"No, I mean a lot of dungeon. Enough that if we watered you, something might grow."
"I'd like to object to being used as experimental soil."
Lyra glances at my head. "She's not exaggerating."
"Oh good," I mutter. "I'm becoming landscape."
Kaela's tail curls happily. "We'll fix that."
The corridors shift as we move deeper into the dormitory wing. The stone here is older, worn smooth by decades of students passing through. Somewhere distant, I hear the low murmur of voices, the clatter of dishes from the dining hall. The bathhouse is tucked into the eastern wing of the dormitory, just three corridors from our rooms. It's one of those spaces that feels older than the rest of the building. Steam drifts out through the doorway in thick, lazy clouds, carrying the scent of mineral water and herbs I don't know the names for.
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I hadn't realized how cold I was until now.
Students move quietly through the front chamber, most wrapped in towels or light bathing robes. A few look up as we enter, then look away just as quickly because no one wants to be the person visibly staring at the four disaster girls who appear to have lost a fight with a wall.
I hover because changing rooms are an entirely different genre of stress now that I can see. There are too many bodies, too much bare skin, my brain keeps tripping over where to look like it’s a physical obstacle. Seeing is still new enough that situations involving communal undressing feel like my brain has been thrown into a cultural blender and told to improvise.
Kaela notices me stalling. "You can take the corner stall. Unless you want us to help."
I point at her. "If you ‘help’ me,” I say, “I’m going back to being blind out of spite.”
"You don’t even know how you started seeing in the first place," Lyra says.
"Please don’t help," I say to Lyra.
Lyra steers me gently toward the corner alcove. "Then go. Change. We'll wait."
We separate into the changing alcoves. I use the screen and the blessed gift of partial privacy to peel off clothes that feel less like fabric now and more like evidence. Dust falls from them in dry little showers. My hair catches in the collar and protests. My neck throbs. The marks there have darkened. I avoid looking at them too long.
I wrap myself in one of the towels and step out carefully, clutching the edge of it with one hand like that will somehow improve the situation. It does not.
Kaela is already out, wrapped in a pale green towel, her hair piled messily atop her head. Lyra has hers tied securely. Mira emerges last and confirms what I already suspected: she looks bad.
We move into the main bath chamber. It's round, sunk low into the floor with broad stone steps leading into the water. Steam coils up in silver ribbons from the surface. Pale runes are carved around the inner lip of the pool, glowing warm red. The water itself is almost impossibly clear.
Kaela goes in first with a sigh so dramatic it should have its own soundtrack.
Lyra steps in next and lets out one long breath.
Mira tests the first step. Then another. She lowers herself carefully.
I go last. The water hits my skin and all my thoughts evaporate. Heat closes around my legs, then my hips, then my ribs. I hiss when the water reaches my bruised throat and then immediately, stupidly, relax into it. My eyes close. My shoulders drop.
Mira leans back against the smooth stone edge. "If any of you speak to me for the next ten minutes, I'll kill you."
"She's feeling better," Lyra says.
Kaela's eyes light up with the particular gleam of someone who has just spotted an opportunity. She glances between me and Mira, taking in how I've unconsciously drifted closer to her in the water, and her grin turns absolutely wicked. "Oh, I can see that. Very relaxed. Very peaceful. Very. . ." she pauses, tilting her head with exaggerated innocence, "Close to Fey."
Kaela suddenly presses both of her hands against my waist and pushes me towards Mira.
My body reacts like it’s been handed a live bee.
Mira jerks, hissing. "Kaela!"
Kaela covers her mouth. "Oops."
"That was not an accident,” I say.
"It was an accident in spirit,” Kaela says.
I am very aware of Mira beside me. The warmth of her arm. The line of her shoulder slick with steam. The bruise near her eye looks even darker this close.
Neither of us says anything.
Kaela looks between us and makes the exact expression of a person adding fuel to a private fire.
Mira glares at Kaela. "If you push me again, I'll drown you."
Kaela presses both hands to her heart. "You say that like it isn't flirting."
Mira splashes her full in the face.
I laugh. I don't mean to. It just escapes me. For one strange second we all stop and look at each other, and the absurdity of the day cracks open around the edges.
Lyra smiles first. Then Kaela starts laughing again. Even Mira's mouth twitches.
Something inside me unclenches. Not enough to forget where we are or what happened. But enough. Enough to breathe.
Kaela eventually settles enough to resume being useful. She rinses the rest of the dust from my hair with only two more minor acts of betrayal. By the end, the water around us has gone faintly cloudy with grime. As the water becomes cloudy, I notice a glow coming from under the water all around us. I look down, drawn by the light, and see dozens, maybe hundreds, of runes spread out beneath the surface. They spiral inward from the edges of the bath, meeting in the center where they form a small circle easily visible through the clear water.
I stare.
The runes pulse outward in gentle waves, each one lighting in sequence like a heartbeat made visible. The cloudiness begins to dissolve. Within seconds, the murky grey water clears like someone has simply decided it should, leaving the bath pristine and crystalline again.
It's beautiful. Effortless. Magic doing what magic does here, quietly, constantly, woven into the fabric of everyday life.
Kaela, Mira, and Lyra don’t even glance down. Of course they don’t. When your world is built out of miracles, you stop calling them miracles and start calling them normal.
I watch the last of the runes fade back to dormancy and feel something twist in my chest. Wonder, maybe. Or longing. Or the strange grief of realizing that, even after everything that happened, I'll never take this for granted the way they do. Somewhere on Earth, a luxury spa would charge a month’s rent for this. Here it’s just… the bath doing its little self-cleaning hobby, like it’s a Roomba with a theology degree.
"There," Kaela says, satisfied. She looks at me, leaning against the edge of the bath. "Much better. You look like a person again."
"I looked like a person before," I say, drawing my attention away from the runes to look at Kaela.
"You looked like a very committed dust spirit."
Lyra shifts toward Mira then, expression sharpening. "Your turn."
Mira immediately goes flat. "No."
"That was not a question."
Kaela scoots closer. "We need to look."
"You have already looked. Repeatedly. I'm considering filing a complaint with the bathhouse management."
"At your wounds," I say.
Mira glances at me. "And you're still weirdly invested. What's next, you'll want to check my teeth?"
"I'm invested in not dragging your unconscious body to the infirmary wrapped in a wet towel."
Mira leans her head back against the stone. "Fine. But if any of you make one dramatic sound, I'm leaving."
Lyra looks at the cut on Mira's forehead.
"You need that cleaned properly," Lyra says.
"I am literally in a bath."
"With clean water and zero medical supplies."
Kaela tilts her head. "Your eye is swelling."
"So I've been told."
"And if you have a concussion. . ."
"I do not."
Lyra's voice goes dry. "I don't think that's how head injuries work."
Mira closes her eyes. "All of you are so loud."
"We're worried," I say.
"I noticed," Mira says. She opens her eyes and looks at the three of us, one by one, then away. "I'll go to Nurse Runa if I start seeing double."
"You're already seeing double," I say. "There are two of Kaela at all times. One physically and one spiritually."
Kaela gasps. "That's beautiful."
Mira stares at the steam. "I should have gone to the infirmary. I would be unconscious and unable to hear this."
"Too late," Kaela says.
For a while we just sit there. No one speaks. The bathhouse holds us gently in the wet, glowing hush of itself. My body keeps remembering new places to relax. The ache in my throat dulls to something manageable. The tension in my shoulders unwinds by slow degrees. Kaela drifts close enough that her shoulder brushes mine now and then. Lyra has gone still in that thoughtful way she does when her mind is six steps ahead. Mira sits with her head tipped back and her eyes half closed, looking for the first time since the dungeon not sharp or angry or defensive, but simply tired.
I think, with a kind of frightened tenderness, that if someone froze this moment and offered it to me forever, I might take it.
Then I remember forever is usually where stories hide the knife.
It's Lyra who breaks the silence. "The device. The one the soldier was trying to use."
My stomach tightens.
"The radio," I say. "It lets people speak over long distances." I take a breath, trying to sound steady. "You speak into a transmitter and the sound converts to signals that travel for miles. Someone with a receiver can hear you. It's just... communication. Technology. Nothing complicated."
I tell myself I’m safe.
But as I say it, I remember the soldier's hands. The way he gripped the device like it was his only lifeline. My hand moves without thinking. I touch my neck where the bruises are, where his fingers left their marks in dark purple crescents.
"He was trying to. . ." My voice fractures. "The static was so loud, and he wouldn't let go, and I could feel him pressing the button, trying to send a message, trying to tell them where we were, and his hands were so. . ." I swallow hard. I’m talking too fast. Like if I explain it well enough, it stops being real. The water suddenly feels too warm. Too close. "I don't know what he said. I don't know if anyone heard him. I don't know if they're coming and. . ."
My breathing has gone shallow. The bathhouse feels smaller. The steam feels like it's pressing down.
"Fey," Lyra says quietly.
Kaela moves before I finish speaking. One second she's across the small curve of water and the next she's next to me, arms wrapping around my shoulders in a damp, warm hug.
I freeze.
Slowly my shoulders drop half an inch.
"It's not your job to know everything," she says into my wet hair.
I stare at the opposite side of the bath. My heart is still racing, but the rhythm is becoming less frantic. Less like a trapped bird. More like something that might eventually remember how to beat normally.
"You are getting water in my ear," I say. My voice is still thin, but it's words. Actual words instead of panic.
"Good."
"How is that good."
"It means I'm hugging you effectively."
Mira watches us with open resignation. "She's impossible."
My fingers, which had been clenched in the fabric of her towel, relax. The tension in my jaw eases by degrees.
Kaela squeezes once, then lets go just enough to look at me. "Also, your hair is very soft now."
"Thank you," I say.
Kaela beams. "You're welcome."
Eventually the water cools enough that we can't pretend we've been in it for what feels like ten minutes instead of something closer to forever. Lyra is the one who notices first.
"We should get out," she says reluctantly.
"No," Kaela says.
"Your fingers are wrinkled."
"They're evolving."
"That's not how hands work."
Mira lifts herself carefully, swallowing a wince. "If I stay in any longer, I'll fuse to the stone."
We climb out one by one, all of us moving slower than we did going in. The air beyond the water bites cooler against damp skin. Kaela hands me a dry towel before I can ask. Lyra gathers the discarded ones into a neat pile.
We dry off in the warm changing chamber, skin flushed from heat, movements quieter now. Kaela helps rewrap the bandage around Mira's side with surprisingly competent hands. Lyra cleans the cut on Mira's forehead as best she can, while Mira complains with enough consistency to reassure all of us she probably isn't about to die.
I pull my clothes back on and they feel different. Still the same shirt. Same skirt. But cleaner where I rinsed what I could. Less like evidence. More like mine.
We move through the bathhouse exit chamber slowly. The front room has emptied out, most students have already gone to dinner or back to their rooms. The attendant at the desk glances up as we pass, her eyes lingering on Mira's forehead, but she doesn't say anything.
The corridor outside the bathhouse is quiet. No chatter. No lazy footsteps. Kaela is saying something about stealing sweet buns on the way back when Lyra reaches for the door.
She pulls it open.
There are four guards waiting outside.
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